It’s not just lawyers who are desperate for jobs; the biotech sector in San Diego has taken a huge hit in jobs the last couple of years (my husband is one of many laid off):

01/19/10 “(Recruiter Meredith)Dow says it is clear some industry sectors in San Diego weathered last year’s funding drought better than others. For example, she says, the past year was hard on early-stage drug research. Cash-starved biotechs slashed drug discovery operations in order to finance clinical trials of their most advanced drug candidates. Large numbers of veteran scientists were let go, resulting in one of the worst employment markets Dow has ever witnessed for medicinal chemists.

“In normal times, chemists never sat on the market for more than a week or two,” she tells me. “Now, some really great analytic chemists and organic chemists have been out for work for six or seven months. That is going to be the norm, unfortunately.”

Dow expects at best slight gains in life sciences employment in San Diego this year. Although the worst may be over, she says it will be a while before lost research jobs come back.